Applications of Grounding

This paper offers a modification of Fabrice Correia's and Alexander Skiles' ("Grounding, Essence, and Identity") definition of grounding in terms of generalized identity that extends it to zero-grounding. This definition promises to improve our understanding of zero-grounding by capturing it within the framework of generalized identity and allows an essentialist theory of modality based on Correia's and Skiles' account to resist a recent challenge by Jessica Leech. The latter is achieved by combining the following two ideas: (1) Some necessities are (...) grounded in truths about zero-grounding, and (2) at least some identity truths are zero-grounded. Finally, some advantages of the zero-grounding approach over Correia's and Skiles' recent definition of necessity in terms of generalized identity and logical consequence are argued for. (shrink)

This paper argues that engaging in a ubiquitous form of rational inquiry commits us to an epistemic form of Explanatory Idealism: the claim that any rational (human) inquirer can access every explanation.

According to a current trend in social ontology, by articulating claims of social construction in terms of metaphysical grounding, we can shed light on the metaphysics of social construction and understand deep truths about social identities like race and gender. Focusing on two recent accounts, I argue that this move from social construction to grounding has limitations. While there are intelligible grounding claims that can explain certain ideas in social ontology, such grounding claims add nothing to what we have learnt (...) from constructionists about race and gender. Although some applications of this grounding approach attempt to remedy this and offer detailed analyses of how social kinds are grounded, they yield results that are inconsistent with some very plausible views about social construction. Thus, if we want to illuminate the metaphysics of social construction, we must explore other alternatives. (shrink)

What is the source of normativity? According to Bengson, Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2023), we can answer this question by identifying non-normative grounds of fundamental normative facts. To illustrate how this can be achieved, they argue that facts concerning essences of normative properties are non-normative facts, and such facts can be seen as non-normative grounds of fundamental normative facts. I argue that this strategy is misguided. First, explanations citing essence facts about normative properties are poor answers to the question of the (...) source of normativity. Second, it is not clear if such facts are non-normative in the relevant sense. Along the way, I address questions about what it is to be a normative fact and relate the implications of this discussion to general issues about metaphysical explanation in meta-normativity. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depend. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism, and specify the conditions under which this is possible.

This paper surveys the main contemporary approaches to ontological dependence. After introducing the notion in general terms, we examine the modal and essentialist accounts, outlining their respective strengths and limi- tations, both old and new. We then discuss the ground-theoretic approach, specifying its relative strengths. Finally, we provide new derivations of classical principles of dependence, such as irreflexivity, transitivity, and necessity, based on this approach.

It is often assumed there are two sorts of mathematical proofs: some only show that a theorem holds, while others show why it holds. Yet, some argue mathematical explanation is impossible, citing (i) explanatory realism—explanations rely on objective dependencies—and (ii) the nature of mathematical facts, which allegedly lack such dependencies. We rebut this argument, then show that explanatory realism combined with grounding and essence allows for mathematical explanation. Finally, we argue that the real issue touches scope: grounding logics exclude many (...) explanatory proofs. Our paper thus defends mathematical explanation’s possibility and calls for better alignment with actual practice. (shrink)

It is overwhelmingly plausible that part of what gives individuals their particular legal or institutional statuses is the fact that there are general laws or other policies in place that specify the conditions under which something is to have those statuses. For instance, particular acts are illegal partly in virtue of the existence and content of applicable law. But problems for this apparently plausible view have recently come to light. The problems afflict both attempts to ground legal statuses in general (...) laws and an analogous view concerning the role of general moral principles in grounding moral statuses. Here I argue that these problems can be solved. The solution in the legal case is to recognize an element of self-reference in the law's specification of what gives things their legal statuses. The relevant kind of self-reference is a familiar part of the legal and procedural world. It is immanent in at least some familiar legal or broadly conventional, procedural practices. The lessons of this discussion of legal statuses can then be applied to the meta-ethical debate over moral statuses, yielding a view on which moral principles also incorporate an element of self-reference. (shrink)

A strongly emergent entity is both dependent on and determined by certain phenomena, while being fundamental with respect to them. The claim that there are strongly emergent entities encounters two problems. First, the core idea of strong emergence is initially puzzling and so requires clarification. Second, the idea appears not to have application on our best scientific theories. This paper proposes a simple ground-theoretic account of strong emergence, and offers reasons to think that the phenomenon thereby characterized has applications in (...) biochemistry. One upshot is that claims of strong emergence are ultimately neither as puzzling nor as useless as critics have alleged. Another upshot is that a very simple, ground-theoretic account of fundamentality is more flexible than might have been thought. (shrink)

Creators offload the construction of their artifact in that the world helps to determine the nature of their imposition in ways that can go beyond the content of their imposing activities. Extant theories of imposition fail to account for offloading by requiring match between content and product. Therefore, I develop an externalist theory that accommodates offloading by taking the imposition of mind onto world to be objectively constrained. An important kind of imposition is normativity. Focusing on personal value, what’s valuable (...) for someone is determined by what they value as good or bad for themselves. Such a subjectivist view faces the same problem as extant theories of imposition in seeming to preclude the possibility of making mistakes about value. Applying imposition externalism, I defend an artifactual approach to subjectivism such that mistakes are captured in terms of offloading. A subject’s valuing can fail to match the very value it creates. (shrink)

This article proposes a revisionary approach to the meta-metaphysics of law. It challenges the growing tendency in analytic jurisprudence to treat questions about the nature of law as metaphysical problems that require employing explanatory metaphysical tools (e.g., grounding). Instead, it argues that metaphysical claims are better understood as expressions of semantic rules, inferential relations, and ongoing conceptual negotiations. On this account, engaging with metaphysical questions about law does not entail uncovering the fundamental structure of reality; it involves conceptual work and (...) empirical investigation. From this standpoint, the paper defends a non-explanatory perspective, emphasising the role of language in determining how we come to think and talk about legal reality. Building on Thomasson’s ‘normativist’ account of metaphysical discourse, it develops a non-descriptivist analysis of legal statements, especially those concerning law’s nature, and provides a pragmatist methodology for answering metaphysical questions of law that avoids commitment to discovering worldly metaphysical facts. (shrink)

Propositionalism, the view that moral laws are propositional, is nearly a truism in metaethics. Against this, I argue that those who hold that moral laws play an ineliminable role in moral explanation should reject it. If laws are to play such a role, they must make what explains relevant to what is explained. Yet if laws are themselves propositions, this requirement yields an explanatory regress. I develop a relational alternative according to which moral laws are generative relations rather than propositions. (...) This relational account avoids the regress, preserves the explanatory role of moral laws, and has significant implications for metaethical theory. In particular, I show that it yields a non-trivial formulation of non-naturalism and clarifies the relation between moral and metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

If essences are zero-grounded, they cannot, as some have maintained, vindicate the explanatory priority of essence over metaphysical necessity.

Christian metaphysics advances a surprising thesis about the nature of fundamental reality: the fundamental level of reality is triune (in some sense). Certain Christian traditions maintain that there is a hierarchical structure within the trinity, and recently it has been proposed that such relations should be explicated in terms of the notion of metaphysical ground. This paper is a systematic exploration of the viability of a ground theoretic account of this conception of fundamental reality. We argue for two claims. First, (...) the only adequate ground theoretic accounts must involve laws of ground and must take them to play distinctive explanatory roles. Second, taking the laws of ground to play these distinctive explanatory roles raises a dilemma: either fundamental reality isn't triune in the way demanded by the Christian account or it makes poor predictions about the modal status of certain facts about the laws of ground. (shrink)

A growingly popular development of physicalism, grounding physicalism, holds that phenomenal facts are grounded in physical facts. A main selling point of this view – largely due to Jonathan Schaffer – is its apparent ability to swiftly handle well-known anti-physicalist objections that infer an ontological gap from an explanatory gap. According to Schaffer, grounding physicalists can reject this inference by noting that it often fails in other cases of grounding. That is, they can observe that explanatory gaps are ubiquitous in (...) grounding (i.e., grounding is generally opaque), such that the one between the phenomenal and the physical is merely a special instance of a broader unproblematic pattern. In this paper, I raise a novel challenge for Schaffer’s defense of grounding physicalism. I argue that the examples of opaque grounding to which he appeals are either of the wrong kinds or highly contested. As such, they provide little inductive support for grounding physicalism. (shrink)

What can the notion of ground do for the metaphysics of consciousness that modal notions such as supervenience cannot? At least three things, I suggest. First, it gives us a relation with the right formal features to articulate interlevel relations. I rebut recent claims to the effect that we can just define up suitably asymmetric or non-monotonic relations of supervenience: the defined notions lack some desired features along with the undesired ones. Second, it gives us a relation that is usefully (...) linked to conceivability. For better or worse, it is no longer generally accepted that conceivability has modal import, and positing brute necessities is no longer considered a theoretical cost. Third, it allows us to articulate at least one interesting version of emergentism, a view that is notoriously tricky to capture in modal terms. Along the way, the paper features zombies, ghosts, and attacks by FIST (failure of implied supervenience thesis) and by FIGHT (failure of implied grounding hypothesis). (shrink)

Much philosophy presupposes a picture of reality as stratified into levels or layers. Yet a precise articulation of such a picture has been missing. It is tempting to think that we now have the tools to remedy this, notably due to ground-theoretic accounts of relative fundamentality. One might expect levels of facts, and their hierarchical arrangement, to be definable from relative fundamentality among facts. I show that such a project can at best partially succeed, by establishing certain limitative results. Moreover, (...) I argue that the limitations should not be surprising, in light of an analogy between levels of reality and instants of time. Facts may exist at more than one level, just like persisting objects exist at more than one time. Finally, I develop a new positive proposal, on which levels are not made up of facts, but of what I call “fact realisations”—roughly, facts together with a complete genealogy of their grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for an often-neglected solution to the conceivability argument: the reconciliatory response. Its advocates state that, even if zombies are metaphysically possible, it does not follow that all versions of physicalism are false. To make the reconciliatory response, we must construct a theory that counts as a version of physicalism (because it makes higher-level facts count as physical) but also allows for the metaphysical possibility of zombies. Call any physicalist theory that can make the reconciliatory response (...) type-R physicalism. In this paper, I discuss one version of type-R physicalism: stochastic ground physicalism (SGP). First, I argue that type-R physicalism, construed as SGP, offers physicalists an attractive rationalist package that no other version of physicalism can provide. Second, I address two concerns that have been underexplored in the literature. First, the charge that SGP is incoherent because it fails to provide metaphysical explanations. Second, the charge that type-R physicalism is not a genuine form of physicalism because the supervenience of the phenomenal on the physical is a necessary condition for any formulation of physicalism. I argue that both concerns are ill-founded. (shrink)

According to Russellian panpsychism, the physical is grounded in the mental, or more precisely, the phenomenal. This view has been argued to avoid the main problems of physicalism, according to which the mental is grounded in the physical, dualism, according to which the mental and the physical are co-fundamental, and subjective idealism, according to which only the mental is fundamental and the physical is merely an illusion. But on closer examination, pure panpsychism—according to which the physical is fully grounded in (...) the phenomenal—faces analogues of the main problems of either physicalism and subjective idealism, and impure panpsychism—according to which the physical is merely partially grounded in the phenomenal and partially in non-phenomenal relations or other features—faces analogues of the main problems of dualism. This paper offers a version of Russellian panpsychism, based on combining it with the phenomenal powers view (Mørch 2017, 2018a, 2019b), which avoids or at least significantly diminishes all these analogous problems. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that identity facts are non-fundamental facts, facts grounded in other facts. In this paper, we discuss what might ground the identity facts for individuals and properties by examining two explanatory identity criteria. One criterion, which we call the Explanatory Leibniz’s Law, is for individuals. The other, which we call the Explanatory Intensional Criterion, is for properties. We argue that, when combined with the widely accepted claim that grounding chains do not contain loops, these two criteria give rise (...) to a contradiction. (shrink)

According to generalism, the world is fundamentally general –– ultimately, there are no individuals. I distinguish two versions of this view. ‘Permissive generalism’ holds that facts involving individuals are non-basic: they are generated by purely general basic facts. I argue that permissive generalists will struggle to provide suitably systematic and non-arbitrary explanations for facts involving individuals. These problems are avoided by switching to ‘strict generalism’: the view that truths about individuals are non-perspicuous, and reduce to purely general perspicuous truths. I (...) illustrate this alternative approach by proposing a metaphysical semantics for individualist truths in general terms. This serves both as a recommendation to generalists and, more broadly, as a case study in two different approaches to metaphysical explanation: one centered on generation, the other on reduction. (shrink)

It is well-known that naturalistic dualism faces the ‘T-shirt problem’: it seems to require that the connections between physical and phenomenal truths are somehow covered by compact physical-phenomenal laws. This paper is a detailed exploration of a parallel issue that arises for grounding physicalism –– the view that phenomenal truths are grounded in, but not reducible to, physical truths. It presents four possible responses on behalf of grounding physicalists, and argues that none is satisfactory.

I sketch a new picture of fundamental reality, an alternative to monism and pluralism that I call collective allism. On this view, what's fundamental is neither the universal whole nor some of its parts, but all things taken collectively, i.e., the plurality of all entities. I articulate the view, defend its tenability, and argue that it deserves to be taken seriously--it's a worthy rival to monism and pluralism in current discussions about fundamental reality.

In this book I articulate a new view about fundamental reality, an alternative to the familiar opposition between monism and pluralism. On this view, what’s metaphysically fundamental is neither the universal whole nor certain subcosmic entities, but the plurality of all entities, i.e. all entities taken collectively. I call it collective allism. Using higher-order resources, I systematically develop the view and give shape to the robust realism about plurals and the unorthodox ideology of fundamentality upon which it rests. I argue (...) that collective allism is tenable and merits serious consideration in current debates about fundamental reality—it’s a worthy rival to monism and pluralism given considerations about quantum entanglement, mereological infinitism, natural laws, and relations. -/- . (shrink)

Aristotle famously observed: That you are pale is true because you are pale—but not vice versa. This insight plays an important role in contemporary debates about truth by expressing truth’s dependency on being. However, how to account for this insight remains controversial. This paper employs the logic of grounding to derive Aristotle’s insight rigorously. The derivation requires a specific truth theory as its starting point. Here, Wolfgang Künne’s Modest Conception of Truth is chosen, but it can also be adapted to (...) other theories of truth. As a by-product, this analysis uncovers a previously unnoticed problem in Künne’s theory—one for which I also propose a solution. (shrink)

According to the popular counterfactual account of harm and benefit, something benefits (harms) someone just in case it leaves them better (worse) off than they would have been without it. As its name suggests, the counterfactual account foregrounds counterfactual dependence as the guide to the nature of harm and benefit. In spite of this account’s many attractions, it is known to face extensional difficulties in cases of preemption and overdetermination. In this paper, I argue that the true significance of cases (...) of preemption and overdetermination has been overlooked, and I raise a new challenge of preemption and overdetermination. This challenge highlights how metaphysical dependence (i.e., grounding) matters for harm and benefit. I argue that no version of the counterfactual account adequately answers the new challenge, and I defend a novel account that answers the challenge and, in doing so, illuminates the role of grounding in the theory of harm and benefit. (shrink)

A response to the collapse and connection problems that appeals to incompletable grounding (for a book symposium on deRosset's Fundamental Things).

Novel account of the notion of transparency relevant to the explanatory gap between the experiential and physical.

Normative inquiry may pursue several different explanatory projects. We may seek to explain why the right acts are right or why the things that are good for us are so, explain what it is for something to be obligatory, or explain the source of reasons for action. This chapter takes steps towards understanding this variety. After laying some general ground about explanation and normativity, I map out some key axes of debate about first-order normative explanation, including the role of normative (...) principles and the nature of the explanatory relation. I discuss the role of explanation in normative inquiry, its relation to grounding in metaphysics and unification in philosophy of science, and explanatory pluralism. I conclude with the other two explanatory projects, concerning the foundations of classes of normative phenomena (such as moral facts or practical reasons) and the natures of individual normative properties, and their relation to first-order normative explanation. (shrink)

Some philosophers hold that knowledge or justification is both necessary and sufficient for rational action: they endorse knowledge–action or justification–action biconditionals. This paper offers a metaphysical challenge to these biconditionals, proceeding from a familiar question: what depends on what? If you know that p iff it is rational to act on p, do you know that p partly because it is rational to act on p, or is it rational to act on p partly because you know that p. A (...) structurally similar question arises for justification–action biconditionals. I argue that no satisfactory answer can be given: each direction of the biconditionals supports an opposite order of explanation to the one supported by the other. Given the traditional asymmetry of metaphysical explanation, the biconditionals should therefore be rejected. While knowledge might be necessary for rational action, and it might be sufficient, it cannot be both—and the same goes for justification. (shrink)

Call metaphysicians who think that chains of ontological dependence must terminate in a collection of fundamental entities "foundationalists". Call metaphysicians who think that chains of being can proceed ad infinitum "infinitists". Foundationalists claim that foundationalism displays certain theoretical advantages over infinitism. First, some maintain that infinitism has a special explanatory problem that foundationalism doesn’t. Second, others maintain that foundationalism exhibits greater theoretical unity than infinitism. I argue that these considerations give us no reason to prefer foundationalism to infinitism. Against the (...) foundationalist’s first purported advantage, I argue that foundationalists must make theoretical concessions similar to those infinitists must make (§1). And against the foundationalist’s second purported advantage – an advantage infinitists haven’t yet addressed – I argue that infinitism exhibits a different, but nevertheless attractive, kind of theoretical virtue; namely, infinitists explain all existence facts in similar ways (§2). I conclude that foundationalism and infinitism are, at worst, on a theoretical par (§3). (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is a cornerstone of rationalist metaphysics, yet many of its consequences remain underexplored. I argue that among these underexplored consequences is a striking variety of neutral monism, construed as the thesis that all entities share the same fundamental modal base. My argument proceeds in three stages. First, I motivate a commitment to attributes, metaphysically necessary properties that ultimately explain an entity’s modal profile. Second, I argue that the PSR supports the claim that every entity (...) must instantiate every attribute. Third, I draw out the metaphysical implications of this conclusion: I show that it rules out substance dualism, versions of reductive and nonreductive physicalism, and idealism in favour of a neutral monist ontology. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that right‐makers, that is, the things that make something—say, an action—right, do so by explaining why it is right. This view can be spelled out in terms of metaphysical ground: right‐making just is grounding of rightness facts. In this paper, I present three challenges to this view and argue that no purely ground‐based account of right‐making is fully satisfactory. Instead, I defend a novel version of a reasons‐based account, according to which right‐makers are grounds (...) that ground in virtue of being a normative reason. This reasons‐based account, I shall argue, provides a unified solution to the challenges outlined and entails nuanced distinctions that alternative accounts brush aside. I show that my account is applicable to value‐making relations on the assumption that value is not prior to normative reasons. The discussion thus reveals a novel argument for buck‐passing accounts of value, that is, the view that value can be explained in terms of normative reasons. (shrink)

In philosophical Buddhism, a prominent view is that the ‘Buddhist Jewels’ are helpful for achieving nirvana. These jewels include the Buddha, the Dharma (fundamental teaching), and the Sangha (the community of believers). In the medieval Buddhist philosopher Dölpopa’s Jonang-Shentong Buddhism, these jewels though are somehow mysteriously identical to one another – despite each having different features. This paper outlines an analytic-friendly analysis of the Buddhist jewels according to Dölpopa’s Shentong tradition by drawing on recent advancements in plural logic and analytic (...) metaphysics. We begin by outlining the general metaphysics of Shentong Buddhism and the puzzles that arise regarding the Jewels (§1). Afterwards, relevant background in plural logic and contemporary metaphysics is covered (§2), a subsequent analysis of the Jewels is given (§3), and finally a few worries are engaged (§4). (shrink)

Grounding is a non-reductive relation which promises to help physicalists deal with the hard problem of consciousness. Grounding physicalists, however, are yet to face the new challenge for physicalism, which consists of explaining our substantive phenomenal knowledge. Among the difficulties posed by this challenge, grounding physicalists struggle the most in accounting for revelation, the claim that our phenomenal knowledge is not only substantive, but also essence-revealing. Revelation is said to be in tension with the view that grounding relations are essence-mediated. (...) We argue that grounding physicalists can accommodate revelation in two ways. First, they can drop the claim that the physical/phenomenal grounding relation is essence-mediated and adopt a law-based formulation of grounding physicalism. However, to make this work, they must show that the resulting view does not bear the costs of dualism. Second, they can retain essence-mediation and explain why, contrary to introspective appearances, phenomenal properties do not have purely phenomenal essences. We contend that both approaches are viable, grounding physicalism can address the new challenge. (shrink)

It is overwhelmingly plausible that part of what gives individuals their particular legal or institutional statuses is the fact that there are general laws or other policies in place that specify the conditions under which something is to have those statuses. For instance, particular acts are illegal partly in virtue of the existence and content of applicable law. But problems for this apparently plausible view have recently come to light. The problems afflict both attempts to ground legal statuses in general (...) laws and an analogous view concerning the role of general moral principles in grounding moral statuses. Here I argue that these problems can be solved. The solution in the legal case is to recognize an element of self‐reference in the law's specification of what gives things their legal statuses. The relevant kind of self‐reference is a familiar part of the legal and procedural world. It is immanent in at least some familiar legal or broadly conventional, procedural practices. The lessons of this discussion of legal statuses can then be applied to the meta‐ethical debate over moral statuses, yielding a view on which moral principles also incorporate an element of self‐reference. (shrink)

According to directionalism, non-symmetric relations are distinct from their converses. Kit Fine (2000) argues that the directionalist faces a dilemma; they must either (i) reject the principle Uniqueness, which states that no completion (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) is a completion of more than one relation, or (ii) reject the principle Identity, which states that each completion of a relation is identical to a completion of its converse (e.g., Dante’s loving Bice is identical to Bice’s being loved by Dante). (...) Fine’s argument has been regarded as a decisive blow to directionalism. But new strategies for replying to it can be developed with the tools of the postmodal metaphysician, who is comfortable individuating relations and their completions hyperintensionally, allowing for necessary connections between distinct entities, and making use of hyperintensional notions like essence and grounding. In what follows, I develop postmodal strategies for denying both horns of Fine’s dilemma, concluding that the postmodal directionalist need not be concerned with Fine’s argument. (shrink)

We impose our minds onto the world. We create artifacts that reflect our intentions to make them. We make social constructions that mirror our collective agreements. We impress value by our valuing. Discomfort with this power to mold the world in our image has led many to reject such mirroring of mind by world, but this would do away with much of the human realm. Therefore, I offer a realist account of imposition by way of enfolding it within a more (...) general account of how intentional states can produce new intentionally-dependent phenomena. Truth arises only due to beliefs determining that certain facts make them true. Desires forge satisfaction by determining that certain occurrences satisfy them. Impositions of mind are made in the same basic way. They are produced due to imposing attitudes determining how they are produced. We should be no more skeptical of imposition than of truth and satisfaction. (shrink)

This article deals with a very simple question: Can an entity (object, property, or relation) e constitute a fact p, which is more fundamental than the very fact that e exists? Some metaphysicians, based on the ‘existence precedes constituency’ dogma have been defending a negative answer for this question. My main aim in this article is to argue against this dogma. I will, firstly, show why this question is important, and then, secondly, present some plausible counterexamples, that is, cases in (...) which a given entity constitutes a fact which grounds, and so ‘is more fundamental than’, the very fact that it exists. (shrink)

This paper develops a systematic account of the immediate grounds of conditionals, uses this to give a ground-theoretic semantics for the language of intuitionistic propositional logic, and proves intuitionistic logic sound and complete with respect to this semantics. A striking consequence of the account is that all intuitionistic validities are zero-grounded and thus—unlike distinctively classical validities—make no demand on reality.

Reality is composed of facts that enter into two kinds of determination or explanatory relations: grounding and causation. When one fact grounds or causes another, it determines it. It is common to think that each such determination relation is asymmetric. I shall argue for the stronger Euthyphro Principle, according to which determination itself is asymmetric. If A partly determines B—either by partly grounding it or by partly causing it—then it is not the case that B partly determines A—either by partly (...) grounding it or by partly causing it. If this is right, many philosophical views are incompatible with some intuitive claims about their subject matters. Hence, the principle has serious implications in various parts of philosophy. The paper argues for the principle and responds to putative counterexamples. (shrink)

It’s often claimed that the laws of nature govern what the world is like, but it’s not clear what governing amounts to. One natural thought is to spell out the notion of governing in terms of grounding. In this paper I propose a way to do so that provides us with a fine-grained picture of governing. This fine-grained picture yields a number of benefits. First, it allows us to distinguish between different kinds of governing. In particular, it provides us with (...) the means to distinguish between constraining and producing kinds of governing. Second, it helps us assess several recent objections to characterizing governing in terms of grounding: it allows us to see that most of these objections only apply to certain kinds of governing, and that even then there are ways to mitigate these worries. Third, it allows us to assess the relative merits of different kinds of governing. And in particular, it allows us to see some reasons to prefer constraining governing over producing governing. (shrink)

We present a modal argument for a necessary being that distinguishes hierarchical grounding relations to address traditional objections to cosmological proofs. By separating intra-temporal grounding (dependencies within temporal order) from ultimate grounding (atemporal existential foundation), we demonstrate that contingent reality requires necessary grounding even if temporal causal chains extend infinitely. Employing S5 modal logic under an actualist interpretation, we prove that well-founded grounding hierarchies terminate in a unique necessary being, whose necessity is established through an exhaustive modal dichotomy applied to (...) the actual terminus of the hierarchy. This being possesses traditional divine attributes including simplicity, immateriality, timelessness, and causal maximality, derived deductively from necessary existence together with the explanatory requirements of ultimate grounding. Our hierarchical framework resolves objections from quantum indeterminacy, eternal cosmologies, and self-sustaining systems while addressing Kantian concerns about applying causation beyond temporal domains. The argument establishes that metaphysical analysis of contingency structures necessarily entails a timeless foundation transcending the natural order. (shrink)

Many traditional theists maintain that God is the ultimate explanation of the universe, for why anything exists at all. For the traditional theist, only a being who is fundamental and transcendent can provide an ultimate ground and explanation of the universe. This requirement that God transcend the universe in order to ultimately explain it poses a challenge for pantheism, the view that God is numerically identical with the universe. If God is identical with the universe, and God is supposed to (...) be the ultimate explanation of the universe, the result is an instance of circular explanation. And circular explanations are allegedly illegitimate. In this article, I develop two explanatory models in an attempt to show that pantheism is consistent with non-circular explanations of the universe. All else being equal, I argue that pantheism is not explanatorily deficient in comparison to traditional theism. (shrink)

Metaphysical rationalism involves a commitment to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason that says, ‘every fact as a metaphysical explanation’. While the PSR has been the subject of renewed enthusiasm recently among certain analytic metaphysicians, I argue it faces a significant challenge stemming from an important connection between explanation and understanding. Many thinkers who hold competing accounts of what explanation is have argued that understanding is a constraint on explanation. I argue that the PSR is committed to an (...) ontic or objective account of explanation that is inconsistent with this constraint. So long as this constraint on explanation holds, it follows the PSR is false. I argue further that even if understanding is not a constraint on explanation, the PSR holds no meaningful epistemic value because it plays no direct role in facilitating or guiding our inquiry and explanatory practices. (shrink)

Panentheists advocate for a unique and rival view of God and his relationship to the cosmos. A common panentheistic slogan says the cosmos is in God, but God is more than the cosmos. God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent. However, it’s unclear how we should interpret this slogan. Focusing on key passages in the Bhagavad-Gīta, I propose three desiderata that a minimal account of the panentheist’s God-world relation must adhere to and argue that the relation of metaphysical grounding meets all (...) three. On my view, panentheism is the view that God’s existence grounds the existence of the cosmos. I develop this view in opposition to rival accounts and argue that we can plausibly demarcate panentheism from traditional theism in terms of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. (shrink)

According to the doctrine of divine aseity, God is existentially independent. He does not depend upon anything for his existence. I argue that the notion of metaphysical grounding is ideally suited for capturing God’s existential independence. On this approach, God’s aseity is the view that God’s existence is ungrounded, and so fundamental. I defend this approach against rival causal and modal-existential analyses of God’s existential independence. I then argue that the nature of grounding provides metaphysical and explanatory reasons to reject (...) a positive conception of aseity according to which God exists in virtue of himself. (shrink)

Advaita Vedānta is a non-dualistic school of Indian philosophy, systematized by Śaṅkara (roughly 8th-9th Century CE). Central to Advaita Vedānta are two claims. First, Brahman is the sole existent. Second, the world or universe asymmetrically depends upon Brahman for its appearance. I argue that the conjunction of these two claims entails a contradiction. I consider potential solutions to this puzzle from both the tradition of Advaita Vedānta itself and the contemporary literature on metaphysical grounding. I tentatively conclude that the Advaitin’s (...) best strategy for solving the puzzle is to espouse a form of mysterianism with respect to Brahman’s relationship with the world. (shrink)